i'm s.e. cupp back here in "the cycle." we're talking fiscal compromise. i know you thought i was going to say fiscal. >> michigan passed controversial right to work laws. we're on top of developing news. >> i'm krystal ball we fight for the right to party. it's a holiday party after the show and we'll be well behaved. >> sort of. >> i'm steve kornacki. i'm a resident party animal. you haven't seen the pictures of the 2002 massachusetts gubernatorial debate watch party. >> what? >> we stand corrected. it's always a party here in "the cycle."

developing news this hour. protesters rae main out of michigan's capitol building urging the governor not to sign right to work legislation and barring them from requiring workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment. the state house passed both bills today dealing with private and public sector unions. protesters were shouting "shame on you" from the gallery. michael moore said they're up to 15,000 people at the protest. state senate passed both bills last week and now michigan governor rick snyder says he'll sign them as early as tomorrow. nbc's ron mott is there. what's the latest? >> reporter: hey there, good day to you. i'm not sure about 15,000 number but there are still a lot of

folks here. most of them have probably started making their away from the state capitol because the measures here to protest have come and gone. as you mentioned the house passing two measures of public and private unions. i came back from an interview with the governor and asked him about the timing of this. this is pushed through the legislature in a lame deck session. a few more democratic me believes headed here and i asked the governor why not just table it? let the bills come to the desk, veto it and come back in january and have a fuller debate if you will. his answer was essentially that they've had plenty of time to debate this issue. that he said organized labor put a measure on the ballot in november that failed at the ballot box by voters and something that was top of mind for folks in state of michigan and workers and union workers say it's unfair for nonmembers to benefit essentially from generations of hard work by

unions especially here in michigan where the auto industry and those unions that have a lot of members working for those autoworkers did work for the middle class here. a gentleman said that this was a nail in the kofb for organized labor and middle class not only here in michigan but around the country for many other families around america, as well. if this passes and the governor says he will sign these in to law, probably tomorrow, michigan will become the 24th state to become a right to work state, a lot of people here at least unhappy about that. back up to you guys. >> all right. thanks, ron mott, in lansing, michigan. let's take this to the table now. toure, your thoughts? >> a friend of mine at the protests as a journalist. he said in the building they're saying they won't leave and may have a violent removal ahead of us. she talked about americans for prosperity. their tent force bring dismantled after throwing pennies at the union workers. your labor isn't worth these.

this is not concern of workers or choice or freedom. the buzz words thrown around. this is about helping business lower wages in states where they have right to work laws, higher rates of poverty and lower wages by almost $9,000. >> and lower unemployment in those states. >> not always. >> not true. >> yes, true. >> it's about the right of less power and to make less money. and you're empowering people to fleeload. you can get high rates of due compliance and it's possible and very, very hard for yuxs s touo that. before you enter the workplace, generations of work, before you enter, the union did generations of work. we don't work on weekends. we get overtime. children don't work. unions did it to make it fairer, wages better and coming in and freeload, that's not fair or what the american people are about. >> you know, there were a couple things in ron's report that jumped out at me. asking snyder, why not wait until january when you have the

newly elected legislature and the answer is he wouldn't have the votes then. you have more democrats coming in. michigan's one of the states where there are pro-labor republicans left and you have a combination of a few republicans and a lot of democrats and they would have had the votes on paper to stop it in january. that's why there's the rush here and a quote i think from the labor person saying the death nail or the nail in the coffin for organized labor. the course here, not so fast, my friends. he is going to sign this tomorrow. snyder will sign it and michigan will be a right to work state and the status in limbo for two years and the question is how do democrats and the unions and how do the pro-union republicans pursue overturn this? and republicans acute in how they put together and appropriations bill and no automatic way to get a referendum to put it on the ballot. what they can do, however, is get 8%, signatures equivalent to 8% of the turnout in the 2010 election, the last gubernatorial

election. if they collect 8% of the public like that they can put it on the ballot in 2014 so there would be that. the other issue is this. rick snyder is up for re-election in 2014 anyway. he already isn't that popular: michigan is generally a blue state to start with. so if you could take out rick snyder in 2014, again, the legislature as it will be comprised this coming year amenable with the democratic governor to undoing the law. >> you don't mean a recall. >> no, no. like in wisconsin, you know, a lot of people in the wake of that say how did scott walker win by so much? voters may not have liked what he did but they didn't like the idea of, you know, he's in the middle of the term. let him finish we elected him to. that's not an issue for snider in 2014. >> i think it should be pointed out that the unions in michigan stand to lose $100 million a year and you can't remove that from the discussion when you're talking about the stakes. the stakes are high. for both sides but i think steve

has very smartly laid out the mechanisms by which people who object to these right to work laws can go about overturning them if they so choose. hopefully what doesn't happen is the kind of protest turned in to violence kind of things that we've seen before. not just in union situations and over labor fights but in general. as toure mentioned, they overturned the afp tent today. we have footage of that. did not look good. you have folks like michigan state representative douglas geise out there promising there will be blood and a tweet saying there will be blood and we'll relive the battle of the overpass referencing a 1937 strike where folks from the ford motor company and labor organizers were beaten up. i mean, that's not the kind of rhetoric we need to jump to when having this fight. as passionate as it is. >> yeah. i mean, i think although there

may be recourse in this particular fight, they may be able to put it back on the ballot and may not stand and get snyder out. it is a major, major wake-up call for people like me who are pro-labor and pro-union in this country to say if it happens in michigan, it could happen absolutely anywhere. i lock at the fact that the initiative they had on the ballot last time, it didn't just fail by a narrow margin. with the president on the ballot, it failed 58-42 and that tells me that unions are not getting their story out of all those great things that you talked about. how they're responsible for workplace safety. for weekends. for, you know, reason -- >> wages. >> increasing wages. there's so much that unions have done in this country and continue to do and put back up the favorite chart and showed yesterday and should be shown every day. as union membership declined so has middle class income share.

it is a very tight correlation and i don't think that unions are doing a good job telling that story to the american people. people think, they hear the rhetoric about choice and freedom and they sound, why should i be forced to join a union? >> right. >> without understanding the benefit that is they would be getting from that union and that you can't just have people freeriding on the system. >> wouldn't they choose to join the union anyway? >> people don't understand the value that they're getting from the union. >> let me just respond to that. the difference is, though, they would still be getting the benefits of the union even if they didn't pay in the dues so why would you pay if you're getting the benefits? one potential model for the future for unions is to look at culinary 226 in las vegas, nevada. nevada is a right to work state and yet they have managed to communicate how important their union is and how important union membership is so they have near

100% membership compliance. those sorts of stories need to be told. >> there's a problem for unions here and you hit it earlier. yeah, there's a good message out there to put out there and there's something fundamental sort of about the american value and we like to think of ourselves as individuals and fundamentally the message of unions and it serves a noble purpose but the message of unions is you are part of a group, a collective organization here. and we have this impulse to rebel against that. no, damn it, i'm my own man, i'm my own woman. why should i have to -- >> you can't force me to. >> you're fighting this and tell the story of all these benefits there's an instinct to say, damn it, i'll get it on my own. >> i'm sure there will be more of this in weeks to come. straight ahead, i've been gone for five days and we're talking fiscal cliff? word is there are new signs of progress. we'll talk it over with joan walsh next as "the cycle" rolls

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the house and senate back in session today anxious to hear what president obama and speaker boehner have been discussing on the call cliff, again. both sides are demanding details. we are demanding solutions. congress is ready to break next friday unlike s.e. and they need a deal and pass it and send it to the oval before december 21st and head home for the holidays without the deadline over their heads like unwanted mist ltoe and no one to kiss. aw. both sides are starting to sound

like the grinch. >> the president's spending cuts and the longer the white house slow walk this is process, the closer our economy gets to the fiscal cliff. the american people have to be scratching their heads and wondering, when is the president going to get serious? >> if there's one fact that should not be in dispute it ought to be this. the president unlike any other party to these negotiations has put forward detailed spending cuts as well as detailed revenue proposals. it is a simple fact. >> i was hoping for actual video of the grinch. to help sort things out today, we have joan walsh, editor at large of salon and did many, many things in her career and besides being steve's own boss. we are obligated to say that every single time she is on. congratulations for hiring steve. i think we have covered that. good job, joan.

>> my finest moment, clearly. >> absolutely. look, there's an idea being batted around about raising the medicare age from 65 to 67. you write a lot about in it your piece today on salon.com. a lot of people exasperated at this idea. why are you against it? >> it's a terrible idea because it saves some money but it basically -- it saves the federal government money. it costs more money in the long run. it puts people at the mercy of the private money. the center of american progress shows that at least 500,000 sign yours uninsured living in states with republican governors or have otherwise said they will not participate in the affordable care act so there's a kind of blithe assumption by liberals that we have obama care and seniors could go in the mix. well, they can't if they live in states where the governor will not add medicaid dollars or not set up an exchange, so it

creates more suffering and it's also so class biassed. i think it's the single best example when this is bandied about as we're protected in the little bubble of suffering and michigan discussion got in to this, too. but, you know, yes, life expectancy increased over the last 20 years. but mainly that's for people at the top of the income level. for lower incomes seniors it's barely increased at all so there's all these assumptions of good for people on the open market longer, that's not true. it's a terrible idea. i cannot believe that the president is even considering it. i just can't even take that in to my mind. >> joan, let's talk about what the president is considering and argue or agree for the sake of agreement that there is a mandate to raise taxes on the wealthy. >> right. >> well polling shows that most of the country wants the government no cut spending. >> we are cutting spending.

we are at the lowest level of discretionary domestic spending since dwight eisenhower. he's put $1.6 trillion of cuts in his last budget. he -- and now he's waiting for republicans to say, what do they want to cut? i want to see john boehner come out and say raise the el jishlt age or whatever else they want. it's a weird game of chicken except for the fact that the president put cuts on the table so get the notion we are not discussing cuts or no cuts. >> well, i mean, he was talking about a balanced plan and we have been mostly talking about the tax hikes and i think i agree with you that republicans need to come out and be very specific about what exactly they would like cut and they have yet to do that. i agree. but in terms of the demands for specifics, you know, obama wants more specifics from boehner. boehner wants more specifics of obama. who's going to show their hand first in this game of chicken? >> well, i certainly hope the

president doesn't because he's got all the cards. he has aces up the sleeve so, you know, the bush tax cuts simply expire at the end of the year. i know there's a lot of worry and a lot of concern about what happens if we go over the fiscal cliff, curb, slope, whatever. maybe it's not optimal but it's way better than a bad deal and i think i can't see getting a serious deal done before the holidays. if you talk about all of the intricate things that wonks on both sides maybe could agree, i'm not sure i would agree to any of them, they're so complicated. senator durbin made this point. maybe you force changes on medicare or social security, i hope not but if you do, you can't do that in ten days or five business days or whatever it is. these things take a lot of time and so for the president to -- for democrats to agree to sort of kick the can, extend the tax cuts for another period of time is crazy. they hold all of the cards in this particular game and they

should demand that republicans show their cards and make some concrete proposals. >> well, joan, speaking of democrats holding the cards, one of the things that people have been it on pointing out the leverage democrats have is debt ceiling and another hostage situation like we had in 2011 and the more i think about that, the more sort of preposterous is because they seemed that crazy. and they don't seem quite as crazy as they did then. >> i don't know. >> thank you. >> number one. number two, you know, we went through that as a public. i don't think it will have quite the drama that it did then. but also, i think about this. i mean, holding the country hostage on raising the debt ceiling is not popular in and of itself and then you're going to do it to try to take away medicare from people. >> right. >> a politically toxic idea and a recent poll showing 67% opposed to that as well. 30% in favor.

so how much leverage do republicans have even with the debt kreeling? >> well, you know, they always have leverage because they always have some crazy people in their party and dealing with a president who is by his nature supremely reasonable and always wants to be the grown-up and that worries me. you have got lindsey graham saying we're going to hold the debt ceiling hostage again. he used to be somebody perceived as a reasonable, you know, not crazy republican. and he is now proposing something that most of the country agrees is really crazy. really extreme. shouldn't have happened once. should never happen again. but i agree with you. i think it's crazy to do a deal to avert this debt ceiling showdown. i think the president needs to bring the business community to bear and the voters and just got to become unthinkable. can't be something they're so worried about that they agree to a terrible deal before the holidays. i just -- i can't believe they'd be that stupid. >> and yet, joan, that's what

really kind of i guess impresses me about the situation right now. you know, look, we're all reading smoke signals. very few people know what's being negotiated but we had resources to talk about the raising medicare eligibility age and changing cpi for social security and a less generous benefits formula and cutting benefits long term and been floated and what this is is obama and the white house have ruled out invoking the 14th amendment aez a work around of not giving the republicans leverage on the debt ceiling and decided to roll a debt ceiling extension in to the fiscal cliff deal whatever they end up striking here and seems to me acknowledging republicans have leverage with cpi and talking about raising the medicare age. my question to you as a progressive is, republicans want something big. is there any big concessions you can see acceptable? >> new york city i really can't. and the kind of things we are talking about, even if they're

not -- may not be acceptable to me ever but talking about a version of the changed cpi, the president already said social security is off the table because it is not driving the deficit. that's kind of weird. changes to medicare eligibility again or changes to medicare payments or whatever, it's really complicated to negotiate but i have to say i agree with you, steve. i'm -- i wish that the president hadn't taken the 14th amendment off the table because we're all saying, well, nothing should be off the table. why is that off the table and even if it's tough thing to pull off in the long run? i think that this mania for a fiscal cliff deal is disturbing but i think the president could say -- promise virtually anything at this point. i don't think he gets a deal because john boehner has crazy member who is will never let him to agree to the tax rates the president will hold the line on and he's kind of safe in that way because i don't think that there will be a deal. >> amen, joan. thank you very much. honored to have you on the show.

>> honored to be here. straight ahead, for all the talk on china, policy expert said their gain could be ours, too. the guest spot is next. but when i was in an accident... i was worried the health care system spoke a language all its own with unitedhealthcare, i got help that fit my life. so i never missed a beat. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare.

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the chinese dragon is awake and ready to roar a. new report of the national intelligence council predicts within the next 20 years china will overtake the u.s. as the world's largest economy and suggests asia in general will have more overall power than the u.s. and europe combined. but before we freak out and preemptively launch economic warfare to stay on top, our next guest says america stands to gain a lot from china's growth and china's leadership may be open to the type of reforms to strengthen our relationship.

we have donald gross, he's author of "the china fallacy, how the u.s. can benefit of chi in's rise and avoid another cold war." donald, welcome. i have to say i've talked to both folks on both sides of this argument. i had a long conversation with governor jon huntsman who talked about china being very healthy and robust and our relationship very important, one of the most important in the world, in fact. i talked to gordon chang a number of time who is talked about china being well, pretty evil and collapsing and wanting tock an eminent threat to our country. who's right? >> well, i have to say that i strongly agree with governor huntsman. he was after all the ambassador to china. >> right. >> he's a leading american politician. i think that he has a very good sense of what the chinese government is thinking after

extensive dealings he's had and lived in china several years. >> right. >> and, you know, as even a missionary so my strong sympathies and my, you know, agreement intellectually is with governor huntsman. i think when you speak about the economy, fact is that we're coming out of an economic recession right now as we all know. our rate of growth projected about 2%. the chinese gdp is about 8%. and fact is that china's third largest export market of u.s. goods and services. actually, the largest export market for agricultural products so in the coming years we're looking to expand exports to china. in both goods and services and we will also benefit from chinese capital that's coming in to the united states in to various industries so the fact is we have a very interdependent

economic relationship as treasury secretary geithner has said, we have a great deal, we in china have a great deal invested in each other's success and we have to realize that looking toward the future. >> i think we're sold this bill of goods that china's about to become dominant and thus the u.s. will be subservient but we need each other to be pre-emine pre-eminent. let me read you an article. even after it becomes a world's largest economy china's prosperity dependent on the properity on the rivals like the united states. china will not get ahead if its rivals do not also prosper. so, china needs us to be powerful just as much as we need them. >> that's exactly right. and going back to that national intelligence council report that

has just been released, if you look at the report, it says that for that positive scenario looking toward 2030 is a case where u.s. and china get along better politically and work together just as you were saying. the chinese will have a greater stake in the stability of the international system and a positive scenario that's laid out in that report is, in fact, greater u.s.-china cooperation. a negative scenario would be where the two countries start working at cross purposes with each other and cannot communicate, cannot resolve the problems that exist between them. that would be something we seriously have to be concerned about. >> donald, so, i mean, okay. there is all the talk and maybe mutual interest and cooperation and there's talk about china catching or surpassing the united states as a superpower in the world, whatever that means. when you look at what that's

meant for the u.s., you have troops, military bases, tangled up in geo political stuff across the globe. what kind of superpower does china want to be? >> well, china does not in my opinion want to be the kind of superpower that we normally think of in a military and strategic sense when we use that term. actually, the report that just came out said that the u.s. would remain dominant as the leading power in 2030. it was not as if -- it is not if the chinese are seeking or will replace the united states. that's not the case. what you have to remember just going to your key points on bases and military assets, the u.s. dwarfs china in forces. a couple of examples. the united states has nuclear warhea warheads. the u.s. has 11 aircraft carrier battle groups each with about 55

advanced fighter aircraft. chinese have one aircraft carrier they bought, it was built in 1984 in the ukraine. they use it for training purposes. actually, it was purchased to be used as a floating casino and then the pla, chinese military, decided it would be good for training. you got to put all of these issues, the military factors especially, in perspective. we are ahead of china in virtually every and i would argue every major technological capacity in military forces and military capabilities. that should give us the kind of confidence we need to diplomatically work out the serious security issues that have arisen with china over the last couple of years. but we don't often hear about that, do we? we hear about the future potential chinese capability that we're all supposed to be shaking in our our boots about. i'm sure that at the pentagon where they have a very realistic view of comparability they would

rather be in our vishoes than t chinese. >> thank you very much. another place america's falling we hind china, education. and yet, as our resident mom krystal will tell you, getting your kid in a great school is tougher than ever. a former admissions officer cracks the code on the application process. you ever notice that some people just have a knack for giving the perfect gift?

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it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. side effects include headache, flushing, upset stomach, and abnormal vision. to avoid long-term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. stop taking viagra and call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. this is the age of taking action. viagra. talk to your doctor. so you just heard how the u.s. continues to fall behind china and according to new numbers out today that goes for education, as well. unsurprisingly. eighth graders in the u.s. now rank ninth in math and tenth in science, well behind south korea and singapore. as many of you know, i have a daughter. she's about to start kindergarten and i'm worried about a decent school and a place to get her started on the

right path and navigating application process, it is absolutely insane. we have essays, interviews, meetings. lots and lots of paperwork and keep in mind i'm doing this with a 4-year-old. for kindergarten. >> yep. >> i can't even imagine what it's like for her getting in to college so the idea of a tv show is to help you with the problems and me with my problems, too. >> that's the idea? >> why not. >> okay. so we booked kim vilasio, former applications director and author of "from preschool to grad school, strategies for success at any level of competitive admissions." so, kim, what are sort of the top keys for getting in to a school, really, at any level? >> well, the top advice is to find a school that's a great fit. i think that most parents and most students if they're aplaying to grad school focused on getting in to the school with the best rankings they think gives them the best chance of success but what's likely to

give a student the best chance at success is finding a school that aligns with their interests, a place where they can find friends who they will love spending time with and faculty who they'll love, a place to really thrive. that's what students should be looking for. >> okay. so for grade school in particular, what should we be looking for as we're looking at schools, a bit more specifically, and once our child is in a school, how do we know it's a good fit? >> well, during the application process, one thing that you should be looking for is a teaching style and a culture where your child can thrive. if your child is enjoying being up and experiencing things and very active, probably a bad idea to send your child to a school focusing at sitting at a desk all day but if your child sits stills and a school emphasizes that, that might be a great fit for your child. when you're looking at the younger ages, the other thing is a great fit for the family so as

a family do your family values align with the cultural values of the school? do you meet other parent who is you think you would get along well with? >> yeah, kim, let's talk about the lower grade levels. i have a 5-year-old and a 3 1/2-year-old and one of the things we saw as he sort of play date admissions sort of deals where you just throw the kids in a room and they play with the other kids and the admissions director and teachers roaming around and my wife and i are like, what are they looking for? what are they testing on here? like, what should we be trying to look for and get out of in these situations? >> well, it's difficult for the schools to assess where children are at ages that young. you know, at ages 3 and 4, your child is really still a toddler. some kids at home with mom and grand mom their live and other children in day care since they were very young so part of what the schools are looking for is to determine how well does the child separate from the parents?

does the child play nicely with other kids? can the child sit in structured activities like circle time and get a sense of how ready the child is for the classroom environment offered at that school. >> kim, maybe this is just something that new englanders have grown up hearing but there is this idea that, you know, getting in to the right preschool means you then get in to the right prep school and then get in to the right college. please, for krystal's sake, debunk this mythology for us. >> and then you have the right life. >> yes, of course. of course, of course. it is all toward having the right life. >> unfortunately, there's some truth to that. >> oh! >> great. >> here's why. it's because the very best schools don't have very many spots and what happens is, you know, if you have a kindergarten, for example, to admit 30 students, well, if they had a preschool, chances are 70% to 90% of the students admitted in to that kindergarten went to the preschool beforehand.

>> brutal. >> there may be very few spaces for kids just applying out of the blue and siblings. a lot of times getting a school starting potentially at ninth grade and potentially half of those spots could already be gone or already be earmarked for the siblings of children at that school. >> krystal, earmarked your unborn. >> we're host all the way around. >> you know, kim, i don't have any kids but i care about toure's and krystal's. >> that's nice. >> thinking about what you said and identified there's a squeeze just in terms of, you know, okay, you're in the right kindergarten. you need the right grade school and high school and something else that jumps out at me and all the stories of people with wealth and people with family connections. the story that always jumps out is donald trump's son-in-law. he used to be my boss i guess.

but this is a story that -- >> nothing to do with the story. >> always bothered me. there was a chapter in a book written about how he got in harvard and basically they said academically unqualified and the father gave money to harvard and gets in to harvard and thinking of whether it east krystal's kid or toure's kid but does the right things growing up to position themselves in to harvard, how big of a problem is it buying a way in or legacies, you know, the children of alumni and maybe not that qualified, how many spots are they eating up from people who should be taking them? >> well, i don't think it's a huge problem because, frankly, i don't think most people have millions and millions of dollars to contribute to top schools. the truth is schools do survive based on, you know, how large their endowments are. schools can't improve their programs, private schools can't, without the funds to be able to, you know, create state of the

art facilities, to hire top-notch teacher talent and in that way they care about whether alumni are contributing the school. i won't say that that hasn't made a difference in some cases but overall i think schools need to maintain the integrity of the academic rigor of the classes because they need their alumni to do well. >> all right. kim, thanks for helping me out. >> thank you. up next, the close talker. the drunk. the angry spouse. the liquor-fueled love festive. how not to act at an office party. >> toure. >> what? new prilosec otc wildberry is the same frequent heartburn treatment as prilosec otc. now with a fancy coating that gives you a burst of wildberry flavor. now why make a flavored heartburn pill? because this is america. and we don't just make things you want,

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and we're winning. at chevron nigeria, we haven't had a reported case in 12 years. aids is strong. aids is strong. but we are stronger. and aids... ♪ aids is going to lose. aids is going to lose. ♪ merry christmas, dwight. >> jim. wow. what do we got here? >> what does it look like? >> dead goose. >> and circle get it is square. >> all right. >> i'll get my carving knife out of the trunk. >> we talked about this. >> no, toby. this is different. he's already dead. >> huh oh. someone's goose is cooked. holidays can be a strange time around the workplace as evidenced by the always awkward dwight of nbc's "the office" but how do you avoid the dreaded office party foul? we have all seen them. there's the close talker.

first seen on "seinfeld." the work aholic and discusses first-quarter profit margins. oh, party. how about the liquor-fueled hangover. the inappropriate sexual remarker. we know what they want for christmas. wink. and finally, the drunk, angry spouse. the cycle holiday dinner party extravaganza is tonight. i wonder if that's why only staff is invited this year. we're talking about our party rules which may help you with your party rules today in the back spin. so, i was trying to think about my own holiday party experiences. my own in general party experiences and what wisdom i could impart. we found this list of like 23 commandments from "the wall street journal" of what to do and whatnot to do at a holiday party. i didn't write it down but it

was something to the effect of like it's really bold if you're sort of the first to start dancing at the holiday party and bolder to start dancing by yourself. it just reminded me how much i hate and feel so uncomfortable dancing and so my strategy whether it's -- this creates all sorts of ripple effect problems but my strategy at a party if there's a dance floor and starts to get active, and i know, you know, if leaving is not an option and would be my first choice, i look for the hardest liquor i can find and start downing active, and i know, you know, if leaving is not an option, which would be my first choice, i look for the hardest liquor i can find and i start downing it because the only way you can get me onto a dance floor is if i'm completely drunk beyond, you know -- >> why not just not go on the dance floor? >> because then everybody is calling ou out and they're like you dance like a stiff robot. i have to drink heavily. >> that opens a whole other host of problems. >> then i'm doing dares and --

>> then you're definitely dancing. >> i love these sort of things, but care must be taken. don't go to the office party and show an entirely different face. show the workforce that you're an entirely different person. i found this out the hard way. i used to work at a magazine and i ran into an important person at the magazine at this holiday party and i sit down next to them, and he's clearly drunk and he says, you know, i'm always uncomfortable talking to black people. >> whoa! overshare. >> and i could never forget that the entire time we worked together. he never remembered it. >> this is the problem. see, you didn't do anything wrong in that situation, and yet you're still dealing with the consequences. this is why i generally don't go to holiday parties. not only because i don't like people -- >> this is your rule. >> -- and don't want to talk to them. but because you can go, not be drinking, do everything right, and yet still the drunk intern will tell everyone that he groped you in the bathroom, for example. or you'll walk in to some back

corner and see two married employees -- >> not to each other. >> -- not to each other fooling around and then you have this knowledge. bad things happen at these parties. my policy is to just avoid them. >> certainly no bad things are going to happen at our party. >> i hope not. >> the weirdest one i ever went to was actually in south korea. we were working with a company there, and we were in the office with them, very like strict, structured, everybody addressed each other as mr. and mrs. in the office, and then they invited us to the christmas party. and we show up, and it's again sort of in a formal environment, everybody is like assigned seating in their place, and then they start the activities for the night which included these very structured formal chugging contests in front of the entire company. you would draw a name out of the hat of somebody in your department who had to go to the front of the room and do a chug off of a beer against somebody else from another department for money, for your budget, for your department. >> that is so inappropriate.

>> i think that's after tonight how we're going to be divvying up time on this show. we're going to have some kind of chug contest -- >> i suggested it. i'm pregnant so i can't participate but -- >> she's a veteran it sounds like. she's had to fight for budget with her drinking. >> but i'm also pregnant so that's probably not going to work out. >> but also she's drinking for two. >> anyway. maybe if you're lucky we will post some of the pictures from said party tonight on facebook. we do have this photo up there now. it's the recently released president obama on the phone with mitt romney on election night. romney calling to concede the race. you can all try to guess what's going through obama's head there. pop up video, where are you? one of our facebook friends jamie mitchell, came up with this. sorry, mitt, you can't sit in my chair just for one one time. no, not even for a second. we want to hear what you think. join us at

facebook.com/thecyclemsnbc. as they say in this world, tell a friend. up next, speaking of dos and don'ts, s.e. has some new rules for the gop and they involve, yes, visigoths and unicorns. stay tuned. ♪ don't know what i' ♪ i'd have nothing to prove ♪ i'd have nothing to lose [ male announcer ] zales is the diamond store. take up to an extra 15 percent off storewide, now through sunday.

for conservatives still reeling from the 2012 presidential election and wondering if there's a bright spot on the horizon, there's good news and bad news. the good news is establishment republicans have admitted there's a problems. the bad news is they don't yet understand there's a problem. the republican national committee has taken steps to figure out what went wrong by,

well, doing what committees do best, appointing another committee to assess their own inefficiencies. as the saying goes a camel is a horse by committee. forget the committee. just stick to the following new rules courtesy of me. number one, democrats aren't the visigoths. i didn't become a conservative because someone convinced me liberals were terrible people. conservatism has an uplifting message we need to promote at every opportunity and smile more. voters will be far less terrified of us if we don't look like we want to eat their children. >> good idea. >> number two, don't endorse stupid. the todd akins of the party won'ted coddled, explained, or funded. strong opinions on abortion, gay marriage and other social issues are welcome but junk science is not. number three, get out of the beltway. the same voices have been crafting party messages for

decades and what worked years ago may not work today. consider unorthodox ideas, unless they're newt gingrichs. number four, do not malign aggrieved parties. minorities, gays, immigrants, and anyone else who didn't vote for us this year isn't the enemy. calling them ignorant and lazy probably won't endear them to us. show them how conservative ideas can make their lives better, not how they are making our lives worse. and number five, unicorns aren't real but bipartisanship is. treating agreement like it's a mythical creature is an opportunity squandered. we should look for bipartisan sole lutions for poverty, education, and imoperation. solving problems is the point of politics. politics itself is not. this isn't to say the democrats are innocent. they fearmonger, race baited, and lied at times. this isn't to say there aren't valuable voices inside the